Lazy cooking

I'll admit it. I'm a lazy cook. I look for shortcuts while not sacrificing taste or wholesomeness. One example are my lazy stuffed chiles.

Mmm, tasty

After several requests. I thought I'd share my "secret" with you. Not that it's a secret.

I essentially make lazy chilies rellenos. No roasting and peeling here. No breading or frying. Nope, I'm much too lazy for that (most of the time anyway). And no laborious hollowing out whole peppers. Not at all. My "recipe"? I simply split the peppers lengthwise, remove the stems and seeds and lay them out on a baking sheet. They then get filled with an (approximately) equal mix of cream cheese and shredded cheddar. Finally, they get popped into the oven until the cheese gets melted and puffy. You can wait until the cheese starts to brown but we can never wait that long.

OH, and I've tried it with the reduced fat cream cheese. They're not nearly as good and it tends to get runny and goop out all over the tray. It takes a bit of practice to learn to estimate the amount of cheese you will need for the amount of peppers you have but it isn't too hard. I have a 7 x 10 inch tray that I generally use. I generally cover the tray with split pepper halves (how many depends on the size of the peppers). It takes about half a block of cream cheese with equal shredded cheddar to fill them. The recipe is never the same twice since I never measure anything. We have used other types of cheese- pepper jack for even more kick, cheese curds, string cheese, whatever you have. It's all good. But the cream cheese/cheddar is our favorite.

Someone mentioned in a comment a while ago that she freezes her chilies with the cheese already inside for a quick treat. Hmmm... maybe a possibility. Currently, I freeze the seeded halves in the freezer ready for stuffing, or omelets, or in chili or whatever else trips my trigger in the depths of winter.